


After You Say Goodbye

by crossingwinter



Series: Not According to Plan [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drabble Series that is also part of a Series Series, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-01 11:08:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6515995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sansa deals with the fallout of being Sansa.</p><p>A drabble series that is also a part of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/441940">a series series</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 4/10/2016

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrioritiesSorted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/gifts).



> Posting this is tricky, since I'm writing as I go, but it's more than just writing as I go, it's writing out of order. When it came to bringing it over to AO3, I was confronted with two options about how to post:
> 
>  **option 1** : i insert new drabbles into the fic in the order in which they should be read, and chapter titles will be the date that i add them to the fic so people can, theoretically, keep track of what they’ve read.  
> ↳ pros: fic in order  
> ↳ cons: people reading in real time on ao3 will have to dig into the fic for new chapters, rather than just clicking to the end; probably confusion on their part, not to mention my own
> 
>  **option 2** : come up with some sort of vague numbering system where theoretically unwritten plot points can represent numbers from, let’s say, 1-100. that means that if i write scenes out of order, i can just number them and have it appear non-linearly.  
> ↳ pros: can just add chapters/drabbles in the order i write them and can easily indicate where they appear  
> ↳ cons: if i have something numbered 23, then write a 24, then write a scene between 23 and 24, i either have to go with a ridiculous decimal system or renumber all my chapters
> 
> At the moment, I'm opting for option #1, and planning to put links to the most recent chapter in the "end of fic" notes so people can get to them more easily, but we'll see how it goes. If it gets to be too much, I'll change it.
> 
> Please feel free to send along prompts--either in the comments section here or through the [askbox](http://planlessfic.tumblr.com/prompts) over on tumblr. I will do my best to answer them as I find inspiration.

She is at the precinct all night.  After Pod leaves, Brienne Tarth comes back in with a cup of coffee and a recording device and asks if she’d be willing to make a statement.  

Her eyes flit to the two-way mirror.  She’s sure Pod is back there.  She’s sure he’s still watching her.  Her stomach twists.  _You were my friend_ , she thinks.  _Was it a lie?  
_

_Is it all lies, forever and ever and ever?_

Pod isn’t supposed to be a liar.  He’s supposed to be honest.  The good kind of honest.  The kind of honest that made her feel safe, like when she was a girl, like when Ned–when her father was still alive.  

She swallows.  

“Sansa?” Brienne asks carefully.  

“Sorry,” she hears herself say.  It’s late.  She’s tired.  She’s upset.  She’s…she’s not sure.  She’s not sure of anything.  Not sure who she is.

“Of course,” Brienne says.  _Good cop, bad cop, lying cop.  That’s what that team is._ “It’s late.  Maybe you should go home and come back in tomorrow?”

_Is it even my home?  It was bought with his money.  And Alayne’s.  
_

Alayne doesn’t have green eyes anymore.

She nods, and pulls out her phone and…who does she have?  Who can she text?  She doesn’t want to go back _there_ , and she can’t bear to face Mya, or Myranda, and…god, Harry.  Where is Harry?  She doesn’t even know if she can ask that right now.

“Sansa?”

Every time she says the word Sansa, she feels like she’ll cry.  _I’m not,_ she thought.  _Not anymore.  I can’t be.  Not again._

The door opens and she sees Pod come in.  He’s scruffy–not so much a five o’clock shadow as a three in the morning shadow.  _Liar_ , she thinks, and her cheeks are wet.  _Liar, but I’m here.  And they’re alive._

_But am I?  Who am I?_

_I’m Alayne, father.  Who else would I be?_

Pod’s crossing the room, and kneeling down next to her, and gently, she feels him take her hand.  “You’re not alone,” he whispers to her.  “You’re not.”

He’s so close, and he smells like his deodorant wore off hours ago, and it’s tangy in her nose.  He smells like Pod, and all she can think as she looks at him is how he’s a liar, but he’s not–not really.  He had a reason.  If she’s a liar, why can’t he be a liar too, and if he’s a liar, maybe he won’t hate her for lying the way everyone else will and–and–

She wants to hold him so close she can feel his heart pounding against her chest.  

“We’ll get you home safely,” Brienne says.  “I’m headed up towards Andersonville.  I’ll give you a ride, if you’d like.”

She nods, and Pod squeezes her hand, and his eyes are so tired.  So gentle.


	2. 4/10/2016

Brienne drops her off in her house, and she sees her waiting in the car until she’s safely inside.  She stands in the vestibule breathing hard and looks in the mirror.  It’s dark.  She hasn’t turned the lights on yet.  She looks like herself.  _Even auburn hair would be black at night_ , she thinks.  Harry’s hair is dark when he sleeps.  Everything’s dark at night.

She stares at the shape of herself, then pulls her phone from her pocket.  The battery’s almost dead but she turns on the flashlight and looks at herself again.  Pale face, dark hair, and eyes that are too light.  

She’s used to looking at her eyes. She has to when she puts her contacts in and everything.  But she’s never really looked at how the blue fits in with the rest of her face.  _It doesn’t with my dark hair_ , she thinks.

She shuts off the flashlight and googles a hotel and calls.

Five minutes later, she’s in a cab.  She can’t stay at that house.  Not tonight.  Not ever.


	3. 4/27/2016

_I’m going mad_. 

It’s the only thing she can think.   _I’m going mad.  I’m losing my mind._

_“Sansa?  It’s…It’s your uncle Edmure.”  Her throat is too dry to talk.  
_

_you could be my uncle, couldn’t you? no sansa.  it makes custody much harder.  better that i’m your father._

_“Are you there?  Hello?”  
_

_yes.  no.  can you be my daughter? i’m alayne father, who else would i be?_

It feels like ripping skin off–layers and layers of skin.  Is this her true skin?  Or is that?  Is she a snake?  Is she an onion?

She stares at herself in the hotel mirror.  Blue eyes stare back. _Mom’s eyes.  Bran’s eyes.  It’s your uncle Edmure’s eyes_.  Blue eyes and brown hair.

_My father has brown hair._   Her father, or her dad?  She can’t remember.  She can’t                   think. 

_“Are you there?”_

_yes. no._

_Sansa.  Alayne.  Sansa.  Alayne._ Her head hurts.  Pictures of Bran and Arya and Rickon on a manila folder.  Podrick’s face–serious and his eyes sad.

She looks in the mirror and blue eyes brown hair it’s so _confusing_  because she’s both right now.  She’s both.  She has auburn hair she gets it colored once a month when the roots start to come in, she has auburn hair, but she just got it colored and so it’s Alayne’s hair with Sansa’s eyes.

Her skin is coming off.  Her skin is coming off because what’s true and what’s not?  What’s just another lie she told herself to pull through, and what does she say when it’s her uncle Edmure on the other line, asking her if she’s there, because is she there?  Is she really?  How about now?  How about now?  Because she looks at herself and she’s not there.  She’s not anywhere at all.  Is she there?  How about now?  How about–

She grabs the razor and turns it on and the little spinning heads begin to buzz.  Her hand is oddly still even though the rest of her is trembling as she raises the razor to her head and watches as brown hair falls into the sink.  Brown hair.  Alayne’s hair.

And when it’s gone, she has Sansa’s eyes and no hair anymore.  She starts to laugh.  It isn’t funny, but she’s laughing anyway.

_Maybe I’m going mad.  Or maybe I’m not._

_It’s funny_ , she thinks.   _It feels like something from a song I could write._


	4. 4/27/2016

She hasn’t been sleeping.  Pod can see that from the dark circles under her eyes.  He brings her coffee which she doesn’t drink, and he shares nervous glances with Brienne, who asks if she’s taking care of herself–a question she doesn’t respond to.

Then she comes in with no hair and Pod can’t help it.  He knows he’s not supposed to talk to her–it’s for the best.  Keep distance while Brienne sorts out some more details with her, keep his head down and his contact with the case through reports.  But she comes in with a headscarf to cover her scalp and sunglasses to hide her face and Pod grabs her arm.

“Sansa,” he breathes.  “Did you…did you cut your own…”

She nods from behind the huge black sunglasses.  “Last night.”

Her voice is dry, but surprisingly light.  Smooth.  She knows how to pretend.  It’s a thought that’s chilling.

“Sansa,” he says again, and he reaches up and pulls the sunglasses off her face.  She doesn’t stop him.  Her eyes are red–bloodshot.  She didn’t sleep.  She’d been crying.  Her hair is gone.

Pod glances at Brienne who is pretending not to be watching closely, and Sandor who _isn’t_ pretending, then he takes Sansa’s hand and leads her into the  lounge.  It’s empty, thank god.

“You’re not fine,” he says, thinking quickly.  “That’s more than understandable.  I’d be the same, I’m sure.”

“Would you?” Her head is cocked and she’s watching him.  “How would you know.  Have you lived a lie for the last ten years?  By my count it’s only been a few months.”

It stings.  _She sounds like Sandor.  
_

“Have you slept?”

“No.  I can’t.”

“Have you taken any sleeping pills?”

“It’s all I can do not to swallow a bottle of them.”

Pod looks at her, alarmed, his mouth dropping open and before he can even begin to think of what to say next, tears fill her eyes again.  “ _God damn it_ ,” she says, and her voice is thick.  “I thought I was done crying.”

If she were Alayne, and he were still silly bumbling Pod, he’d hug her.  If they were sitting on his couch watching Battlestar Galactica, or if he were chilling in her practice room while she noodled on the piano, he’d have pulled her into a bear hug.  But he’s a cop and she’s his case so all he can do is put a hand on her shoulder, and he shouldn’t even be doing that.

“You spoke with your uncle yesterday?” he asks her.  

She nods.  “Yeah.  Edmure.”  She presses the sleeve of her sweatshirt to her eyes.  

“How was it?”

“Hard.”

 _That was a dumb question_ , he thinks.  She went back to her hotel and shaved her head.  Of course it was hard.

“Are you…are you going to see them soon?  Are they coming out?”

Sansa pulls out her phone.  “Randa’s booking a flight for me to go out this weekend.” She says.  “As if they’re not all going to hate me.”

“They’re not going to hate you,” Pod says.  “They’ve been assuming you’re dead.  They’ll want to see you.”

“And what will they see?” she asks and she sounds hysterical now.  “Who will they see?  I’m not…” her voice breaks and she lets out a strangled sob and fuck it, he’s hugging her.  He pulls her close and she sobs into his chest, clutching his shirt and he’s squeezing her so tight.  She’s warm, and shaking, and alive.

“They’ll see you,” he says.  “The same way I see you.”

“You don’t–” Sansa begins, but he cuts her off.

“I see someone who tries to make major songs sound sad because minor songs can sound happy if you do that right, but no one tries to make major songs sound sad.  I see someone who likes lemon cakes, and who wishes she could draw and who knits her way through meetings to give herself something to do with her hands.  I see someone who listens, who is thoughtful, and caring, and passionate.  And you don’t see her right now because you think she’s Alayne, but she’s not.  She’s you.  And maybe there are parts of Alayne that aren’t you, but I’m willing to be that not all of her isn’t you–just as not all of her isn’t Sansa.”

She’s still trembling, but she’s not sobbing quite so intensely.  

“My head won’t stop hurting,” she says at last.  “I’ve taken so much ibuprofin, but my headache won’t go away.”

“Probably because you’re not sleeping.  Are you eating?”

She doesn’t move.  Pod sighs.  “Take some sleeping pills tonight.  If you need me to come and make sure you don’t swallow the whole bottle, I’ll do it.  Remember to breathe.  Just because he forced you to lie doesn’t mean you don’t exist, Sansa.  I promise you–you do.”


	5. 4/10/2016

Arya is sitting in a midterm, and her phone won’t stop ringing.  It’s on silent–she’s not inconsiderate–but she keeps seeing it light up in her bag out of the corner of her eye.  It makes it hard to formulate an argument for her Peacemaking and Kingmaking in Early Modern Europe essay.  _Something’s wrong,_ she knows.  She just knows.  It’s not like a text stream where she can just put it from her mind.  The only people who call her are Bran and Jon and Uncle Edmure.  And only in an emergency would they call her this incessantly.

It’s nine in the morning, and Arya has lifts and a seminar this afternoon, and she’d gone to sleep early on purpose so she’d be well rested for this midterm, but now she can’t remember names because every time she pauses, and takes a deep breath, her phone starts to light up again _,_ and she doesn’t know enough to be upset or angry or…

She forces her pen to move across the page, spitting out something about France, because you can always talk about France in this sort of thing, trying to ignore the vague sense of panic that’s wholly unrelated to the grade she’ll get on this exam.  

She hands the midterm in early, knowing she’ll be lucky to get a C, then picks up her phone.  _Thirteen missed calls_ , it reads, and she taps on the notification. Three from Bran, one from Aunt Roslin, and the rest from Uncle Edmure.  _Rickon_ , is Arya’s first thought, _he had an accident during a rehearsal or something_.  He’d been so excited to play Enjolras, and sang his part at her with such gusto that she was convinced he’d fall off the barricade and break his neck.  It had been a black thought, and Arya prays as she hits the callback button next to Edmure’s name that it hadn’t been prophetic.

“There you are,” Edmure said, sounding annoyed.  “We’ve been trying to call you all morning.”

“I know,” Arya says quickly, “I was in a midterm.”

He pauses on the other end of the line.  “Oh.  We thought you might still be asleep.”

“Nope.  I was writing about France.” _Badly_ , she omits.  She’ll worry about that later.  “What’s going on?”

“Arya–” he sounds excited as he says her name.  Why would he sound excited?  “Arya–it’s Sansa.  They’ve found her.”


	6. 4/10/2016

No one recognizes Sansa.  Of course they don’t.  They’re looking for a girl with long brown hair and green eyes, not a girl with a shaved head that’s starting to come in auburn and blue eyes.  And sunglasses.  Her hood is up, and she’s wearing sunglasses and given that she’s coming in the day very early on a Sunday, that doesn’t make her stand out.  She’s always liked New York for that.  No one looks at you twice, no matter how strange you look.  And she does look strange.  She can’t look herself in the mirror right now.  She doesn’t like not recognizing herself.

Myranda said she arranged for a car to pick her up, but as Sansa grabs her bag from the carousel that’s looping bags around for pickup, she doesn’t see anyone holding up a sign that says Stark, or Stone, or Sansa, or Alayne.  She pulls out her phone and sends Randa a text.   _I’ve landed, but I can’t find the car?_

Randa doesn’t reply.  It’s early in Chicago, and she’s probably asleep.  Sansa looks around the baggage claim.

It’s not exactly quiet–LaGuardia airport is never quiet–but it’s not full, and people aren’t bustling too much.  There are some families who are standing together, some throwing their arms around travelers as they approach.  Sansa does her best to ignore the way her gut twists.   _They’ll hate me_ , she thinks.

 _No they won’t_.  It’s Pod’s voice.   _They’ve been dying to see you for years._

 _But I_ lied _to them._

Twitter was bad enough right now.  Arya had fought her like cats and dogs when they’d been girls, and she barely remembered Rickon at all, he’d just been a baby when it had all happened, and Bran…

Maybe it was because she was nervous, or just thinking about him, or something, but she saw a teenager in a wheelchair with reddish hair.  He was sitting talking to another red haired man, and a woman with long brown hair.  Sansa rocks back and forth on her toes, and looks down at her phone again.  No text from Randa.  She drifts towards the three of them, still looking at her phone, dragging her suitcase behind her.

“…’s landed.  But I still don’t see her.”

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom?” the woman suggests.  “Flying’s….”

“You’d think if she’s an international pop star, she’d be used to flying,” the man says.  

“Ed,” the woman hisses.  “Shhh.”

“What?” Ed says.  He looks around, but he doesn’t see her.  He has her mother’s eyes–her eyes.

Sansa gulps.  She takes off her sunglasses, and the motion makes the boy in the chair–Bran–look around.  

She isn’t sure what she’d expected.  A wave, perhaps, or maybe a glare and a jaw dropping.  But Bran smiles and it’s the same smile he’d had when he was seven, that same, warm, elated smile that could soothe any argument and fill anyone with warmth and safety and Sansa starts to cry again as she steps forward again and Bran, with the ease of one who’s spent more than half his life in a wheelchair turns it and rolls towards her, his eyes a little overbright as well.


	7. 4/27/2016

Alayne doesn’t fucking call him, and he can’t say he gives a shit.  _It was about me, you know?  “Don’t Need It.”  It was about me._ Her bumbling fucking moron friend Pod didn’t seem like such a bumbling moron while she’d been in the bathroom.  His face had gotten hard and what was Harry supposed to do if not throw a punch at him?  

Alayne doesn’t call him.  Maybe she’s still at the precinct.  He’s not sure he cares.  He moves up his flight so that he’s leaving for London tomorrow.  He’ll go back home and lick his wounds.  Anya’s already trying to keep the fight off the gossip blogs, but he doubts that’ll happen.  He knows that they eat this shit up.  

“Daddy?” Alys says when he calls her from the airport. 

“Coming home soon sweetheart,” he tells her.  It only makes him angrier.  Alys was only starting to feel comfortable around Alayne, and now she’s not even fucking calling.  People call him a bad dad, but whatever.  Fuck them.  It’s not his fault his girlfriend doesn’t give a shit.  If this is it, what’s he supposed to tell Alys? 

He stews on the plane.  He downs a sleeping pill and some champagne and before he knows it, he’s in Heathrow and Alayne’s halfway around the fucking world.  _And she got mad when I didn’t text her.  Fuck her.  Fuck her hypocrisy._

When he turns his phone off airplane mode, it’s been three days since the fight and there’s a text from Myranda Royce.  He opens it, half-expecting her to make some excuse for Alayne.  He’s never understood their friendship, but he’s angry enough that he’d assume Alayne might ask Myranda to do that.  Alayne hates taking responsibility for shit.  She’s horrible at it.  

_Have you heard?_

_Heard what?_

There’s a bubble that pops up with three little dots and Harry stares at the screen.  What’s she typing?  He doesn’t know.  What’s taking her so long.  

Part of him wonders if something happened to Alayne.

_It’s a mess_

That didn’t take almost a minute of typing to say, and Harry almost shoves the phone in his pocket but he doesn’t because there are three more dots.  Myranda’s typing again.

_She’s at the center of this abducted child case that’s been cold.  I don’t have more details than that.  But it looks like it was a fake identity the whole time.  Alayne Stone doesn’t exist.  She’s someone else._

Harry stares at his phone.  How many times had people on twitter called her fake?  

He switches the phone conversation to the last text he’d sent Alayne before they’d gone out four nights before.  _In a cab on my way._

His fingers hover over the screen for just a moment.  What does he even say?  

_You’re not Alayne?_

Fuck it–she owes him the truth at least. 

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to this chapter, the most recently added chapters are [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6515995/chapters/15268774) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6515995/chapters/15268804).


End file.
